This paper reports a novel approach used to retrofit a set of full-scale Bell Model 412 main rotor blades with 290 miniature pressure transducers, 46 strain gages, and 24 miniature accelerometers. Normally, in order to avoid disturbing the aerodynamics of the rotor flow field, the pressure instrumentation must be integrally built into the body of the rotor blades. However, using a method developed by Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., in cooperation with and under funding from the NASA Ames Research Center, it has been possible to mount miniature pressure transducers to the blade exterior surface without degrading the quality of the blade aerodynamics. Moreover, it has been estimated that this approach reduced costs by more than 50 percent over building a new set of pressure instrumented blades. The aerodynamic measurement objectives, instrumentation design considerations, type of instrumentation used, assembly process, and the installed instrumentation characteristics are presented.
Comprehensive helicopter rotor instrumentation: a retrofit approach using miniature transducers
Umfassende Meßgeräteausstattung eines Hubschrauberrotorblattes: Eine Annäherung mittels Miniaturmeßwertwandlern
AIAA-Papers ; 1-11
1992
11 Seiten, 21 Bilder, 5 Tabellen, 4 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Noise reduction method of miniature single-rotor unmanned helicopter platform
European Patent Office | 2020
|Comprehensive Nonlinear Modeling of a Miniature Unmanned Helicopter 012004
Online Contents | 2012
|